Heidi Hautala

After less than two years on the assembly’s influential environment committee, Hautala was chosen to steer a highly sensitive proposal for a Fuel Quality Directive through the parliament.

In October 2017, Hautala was appointed as the Vice President of the European Parliament until summer 2019, becoming the third Finn to hold the position. In this capacity, she was also a member of the Democracy Support and Election Coordination Group (DEG), which oversees the Parliament’s election observation missions.

In March 2019, Hautala won another lawsuit for transparency, case T-329/17 Hautala and others v EFSA: the General Court annulled «the decision of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) of 14 March 2017, in so far as EFSA refused access to the parts "material, experimental conditions and methods" and "results and discussion" of 12 carcinogenicity studies on the active substance glyphosate». The lawsuit was filed in 2017, following a long controversy around the glyphosate re-authorisation process and the so-called Monsanto Papers, after which EFSA refused to release a number of documents including 75 unpublished studies because «disclosure of the other parts of the studies could undermine the commercial interests of their owners». The court established «that the protection of those commercial interests may not be invoked to preclude the disclosure of that information» by EU institutions, as the public interest prevails.

Hautala was elected as Vice-President of the European Parliament in October 2017 and re-elected to this office in 2019.

In 2016, Hautala was appointed by Erik Solheim, the Chairman of the Development Assistance Committee, to serve on the High Level Panel on the Future of the Development Assistance Committee under the leadership of Mary Robinson. On development, Hautala has proposed that sexual and reproductive health and rights and a gender action plan be core elements of the development policy in light of the Sustainable Development Goals. She has opposed using development policy mechanisms as a basis for military intervention under EU umbrella, denouncing a weak legal basis for the move.

In February 2014 the Chancellor of Justice Jaakko Jonkka stated, that neither Hautala nor the head of the state ownership steering unit of the government acted unlawfully when preventing the filing criminal charges a case against Greenpeace.

Hautala returned to the European Parliament following the 2014 elections. She has since been a member of the Committee on Development, Committee on Legal Affairs and Committee on International Trade as well as substitute member of the Committee on Budgets. She also served as vice-chair of the Greens–European Free Alliance, under the leadership of Rebecca Harms and Philippe Lamberts from 1 July 2014 to 14 November 2017. She was also a co-president of the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly, and the chair of European Parliament delegation to the Euronest from 4 September 2014 to 1 February 2017.

Hautala was ranked as one of the 15 most influential MEPs in the 2014-19 legislature by VoteWatch, as measured by the positions held, the number of reports and opinions and the votes won, weighed by perceived importance and normalized by average influence of their country.

Hautala resigned from her development and state ownership steering minister position in October 2013 amidst of allegations of abuse of power.

Hautala introduced Nekrasov to Bill Browder, whose interview excerpts were used in Nekrasov's film The Magnitsky Act – Behind the Scenes.

Hautala was nominated the minister of international development and state ownership to Jyrki Katainen's government in 2011. In 2013 it emerged Hautala had hired cleaning lady and repair work without taking care of the employer payments. She agreed to pay the contributions and apologised for her actions, and resigned from the ministerial working group against the informal economy. Later, she promoted the service Palkkaus.fi service that was inspired by her: the service intends to make it easy for private employers to handle all the employer payments through a website.

Hautala is a signatory of the 2010 Declaration on Crimes of Communism, a patron of its preceding conference, and was a member of the Reconciliation of European Histories Group as an MEP.

In 2009, Hautala was re-elected to the European Parliament, where she served as chair of the Subcommittee on Human Rights and as member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs.

In 2008, Hautala published the book "Venäjä-teesit. Vakaus vai vapaus" about Russia. In 2015, news media reported that she was included in a Russian blacklist of prominent people from the European Union who are not allowed to enter the country.

In the first round of the 2006 election, Hautala finished fourth of the eight candidates with a vote share of 3.5% (105,248 votes).

Hautala returned to the national Parliament in the elections of 2003.

Between 2002 and 2003, Hautala was the president of the European Parliament Intergroup on Public Health.

As a member of the Committee on Legal Affairs between 1999 and 2003, Hautala participated in the negotiations to increase openness in the EU. In 2001, she successfully took the Council of the European Union to the European Court of Justice over access to a document on arms export rules. The Court ruled that the ministers should have considered publishing at least part of the document. The so-called "Hautala case" set a precedent in European law for access to documents. In 2002, Hautala led a campaign for the European Parliament to set up a public register of members’ assistants.

She is currently a Member of the European Parliament for the third time. Previously she held the post from 1995 to 2003 and 2009 to 2011 when she chaired the Subcommittee on Human Rights 2009–2011. She served as minister for international development and ownership steering issues in Jyrki Katainen's cabinet.

After Finland joined the European Union (EU) in 1995, Hautala was elected to the European Parliament. Between 1998 and 1999, she served as chair of the Committee on Women's Rights. She later led the Greens–European Free Alliance in the European Parliament from 1999 to 2002, alongside Paul Lannoye.

Hautala was the leader of the Finnish Green Party from 1987 to 1991, and a presidential candidate in 2000 and 2006. She was a member of the national parliament from 1991 to 1995.

Heidi Anneli Hautala (born 14 November 1955) is a Finnish politician and Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from Finland. She is a member of the Green League, part of the European Green Party.

Hautala was born in the northern Finnish city of Oulu in 1955. Her father was a high-ranking war-hero who later went on to become one of the region’s most powerful bankers.